Challenge! How can I create this apparently impossible Smart Playlist?

[owen-b]

Hi all,

I want to create a smart playlist that puts all my 5 star albums (I have about 3GB of these in my library at present), most of my 4 star albums, and only 4GB of my 3 star albums (selected by least played), to a maximum of 12GB, for my iPod touch.

I've got a load of smart playlists going on - one for all my 5 star albums, one for all my 3 star albums to a total of 4GB selected by least played, and one for my 4 star albums that haven't been played in the last month.

I put them all together in a new smart playlist, the reasoning being that I'll get ALL my 5 star albums, 4GB of 3 star albums, and the rest made up of whatever fits into the limit set at the bottom of this playlist.

But of course that doesn't work. For one thing, there's no way of making sure that ALL my 5 star albums go in the playlist every single time, no doubt due to the 12GB capacity limit messing things up. Secondly, and MOST frustatingly, as soon as you start to set a capacity limit selected by anything at all, iTunes appears to start splitting up albums and selecting the individual songs randomly, or by least played, or whatever you select, as opposed to whole albums.

So my big problem at the moment is how do I limit a playlist by capacity and NOT break up the albums? If I turn on Shuffle By Album, that keeps them together (apparently) but would mean I'm forced to listen to whole albums when I shuffle, both on iTunes and my iPod, and I don't want that - I want to shuffle the tracks.

So, how can it be done?

Cheers!